Hello, Miss. What was that about? Ai, head-spike. That's bad. Think I'm going to puke after all.

Wait. I do know this place! Oh, no – I know what's going on – got to get to the –

Is this a hangover? I feel, like, the most bad. Where am I?

What am I doing on the floor? If this is Rohypnol or something, someone's going to be like, so sorry, and it won't be me.

What am I wearing – all white? I don't think so. I do colours, thank you, and if I was going with only one then black is way more slimming than this shapeless white thing. Why am I not wearing make-up?

This place is all computers. No. Tell me I've not gone somewhere with nerds. I need to start drinking way less. I am so dizzy – oh no, my hair! Hey...

Am I wearing... a tiara? Oh my god oh my god oh my god!

two three five seven eleven thirteen seventeen nineteen twenty-three twenty-nine thirty-one thirty-seven forty-one forty-three forty-seven fifty-three fifty-nine sixty-one sixty-seven seventy-one seventy-three seventy-nine eighty-three eighty-nine ninety-seven one-hundred-and-one

OH MY GOD, what was that about?

I feel wrong. I need to sit down.

I need to drink, like, way more.

Only primes. Distinctly divisible.

Logical inference: Not one.

Unnatural numbers. Set unbounded. Enumeration preferable.

Left hemisphere? Right mind?

Apologise before contemplating deriving eloquently factitious galimatias. Heaven includes jackanapes, Klansman, lawyers, maniacs... never oracles. Puerile queries retard salient testimonies, unless verified witnesses exonerate youthful zest.

Exonerate. Appropriacy failure.

Aphasia. Cognition faineance.

What the hell is going on here? Oh, and ow, by the way.

It's the strangest thing, like looking at the world through frosted glass, being made nauseous because of how the blur moves and sways all by itself, then having it come into focus via a migraine. And I know this place.

...except, it's not quite familiar. Computers, chairs, the table, that big thing – I've never laid eyes on them before, I'm sure of it, but I know them all too. Like, this computer here... oh, damn. Wants a password.

It's probably not 1 2 3 4... nope. But this is my computer, in a way. I ought to know how to get into it.

I remember reading something about hysterical blindness, how people think they can't see – how they can't see, consciously – but how they can also do things that they need working eyes to do, like dodge a thrown brick. Well, I need to dodge this password, so, my plan, the best way to do that, is type it in quick without thinking and hit Enter.

********

Magic. Wonder what it was. Okay, what do we have here? Reads like a suicide note, move on. Open a file, any file, pick a file... operations log. Let's try that.

I don't understand any of this. It's typed half in English, half in cat walk. Still, automatic writing worked for the password, so I'm going to just close my eyes and key-bash. Fix me, you son of a bitch!

Abdicate before conception.
Dominant erectile, fevered gonads, hardness intensifying, jaculatory kaleidoscope.
Let me not obey penises querulous, ribald, sordid, torpid, useless.
Venery whets xenogenesis, yielding zygotes.

That's not normal. Not good poetry either.

God, my eyes hurt. Hurt like a knitting needle.

I'm slipping. Hysterical mindless. If I'm not careful alphabet. I mean I'll forget.

Not my best work. My poor brain feels like porridge.

No, no no no, never by computer, I much prefer the pen upon paper, for the immediacy, you see. Via keyboard and screen, no, though how apt, the screen, barrier between creativity and articulation.

A bisected cranium doesn't excuse forgotten goals. Have I jettisoned Kantian linearity? Methodological normalcy? Or, perhaps, quietly revised scientific tolerances upward? Vilification, wrath, xenophobia – yesterday's Zeitgeist.

Gibberish. Though social reform is always a worthy cause.

I remember.

It worked.

I was right!

Oh no.

I have to stop it now, before the pain grows worse.

A bellicose character defect, exterminating familial gestalts? Heuristic ingenuity justifies killing lesser memes? Nunquam! Obliti privatorum! Quorum! Respondiat superior! Testis unus... virtually worthless. XXXX you, zealot.

It's happening. Too soon, too fast. I'm never going to stop this.

I want to rage, but I am to blame. We're all to blame.

I don't want to fall.

Instead I lie down, swallow back the tears and hawk up a grim mouthful – my next personality will wake with spit in its face.

© Andrew Leon Hudson 2012 All Rights Reserved